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Emma Brockes - She Left Me the Gun

Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 7:00pm

Five thousand miles from the harsh extremes of her native South Africa, Emma Brockes’s mother charmingly dismissed their quaint village outside London. Glamorous, no-nonsense, and fiercely protective, Brockes’s mother Paula was a nurturing but mysterious presence throughout her daughter’s life. Why she abandoned South Africa in the first place--and why she refused to return for thirty years--was never explained. She Left Me the Gun ($26.95) is the story of Emma Brockes’s quest to uncover her mother’s secret life.

Emma Brockes writes for The Guardian’s Weekend magazine and has contributed to The New York Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle. She is the winner of two British Press awards—Young Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year—and while at Oxford won the Philip Geddes Memorial Prize for Journalism. She lives in New York.

"One of those memoirs that remind you why you liked memoirs in the first place... It has the density of a very good novel... As you do with the best writers, you feel lucky to be in Ms. Brockes's company." --Dwight Garner, "The New York Times"